


cold cracks

by noblealice



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: 5+1 Things, Future Fic, Gen, Post-Finale, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-08
Updated: 2009-12-08
Packaged: 2019-06-27 02:38:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15676323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblealice/pseuds/noblealice
Summary: aka Five Conversations that Never Happened between John Connor and the Women in his Life."It sounds so innocent and he doesn’t want to pop that bubble for her. He thinks of how he grew up, always wary. He doesn’t want that life for this soft-spoken little girl. She looks like an angel. He thinks she must sound like one when she sings. He doesn’t know what he would do yet to save her life, to save a world of children like her. The time is coming soon when he will have to decide and he lingers here on the couch with her, the metal cooling his skin as he debates telling the others this new information. It would condemn Savannah to a life like his."





	cold cracks

**1\. Sarah**  
  
He knows that she sometimes comes into his room while he sleeps. He’s asked her not to, but even he thinks that she wouldn’t be able to break the habit. She’s been practising it for so long.  
  
However, today she doesn’t walk into his room. She’s standing in his door frame, toes on the edge and her body seems to buzz with a nervous energy that makes him wonder if she even went to bed last night.  
  
“Derek’s older. You know that, right?” She breaks the silence as soon as she knows he’s aware of her presence. She’s not one for tip toeing around a subject.  
  
However, knowing she is near is different from being completely awake and it takes longer for his brain to function at this hour. “Hmmph?” He mumbles, pulling the blankets up to his neck, wishing he had the guts to defy her authority by pulling them all the way over his head.   
  
She seems to sense his attitude and imbues an added tension to her voice. Whatever new rule or combat training she wants to teach him is important. He blinks open his eyes to see the sun just barely rising between a crack in his curtains.  
  
“Kyle’s the younger brother. He always had someone to look after him.” The accusation of  _until you send him back to look after me_  drifts unspoken across the room to lay heavy on his chest.  
  
“When you meet him, he’ll—He won’t be---” She struggles with false starts, as if she hadn’t already practised this speech alone in the bathroom in front of the mirror.  
  
“He’ll look so  _young_.” Her voice cracks on the last word, like she’s betraying herself by talking to John about him. She’s told her son that love is a weakness. Family is all we can trust, she’s repeated. John wonders how she views Kyle; which category he fits into.  
  
“So young that maybe you won’t want to send him back.” The sun continues to rise, its path fading behind the clouds outside.  
  
At this point she crosses the threshold, committing herself to her mission. Her voice is louder than the whisper it was imitating before. Her eyes are shining with purpose.  
  
“ _But you have to, John._  Never forget that. No matter how much you like him, you have to do that.”  
  
Sarah Connor almost never says please. Her eyes say it for her.  _Send him back to me,_  she pleads with a stony face and pursed lips as her son lies rumpled in bed early one morning under a grey sky. 

  
  
  
**2\. Cameron**  
  
“Why do we keep playing chess?” Cameron asks, her hair falling over her shoulder.  
  
“Because none of the other soldiers will play with me.”  
  
“They no longer see you as a peer. You are becoming more of a leader to them; someone separate, above them.”  
  
“Well, it’s lonesome at the top.”  
  
“It is true that elevated areas are more remote from the machines what with the more difficult terrain, but I don’t see how your platitude relates to your persistence with this game.”  
  
“Yeah, okay, I know you can calculate an infinite number of moves and—“  
  
“I cannot calculate an infinite number of moves.” She interrupts. “That is impossible since the game of chess has a finite number of moves depending on the limitations of the piece and the layout of the surrounding pieces. I can, however, calculate these variables far faster than your own brain is capable.”  
  
“Thanks, Cameron. What I meant, though, was that I know that your circuits can process all the variables faster but I keep playing because I have to believe that one day, despite your advantages, I can win.”  
  
He does not look at the way her shirt has slipped down, exposing the skin of her shoulder. He does not concentrate on the dip in her throat when she laughs.  
  
He looks down, talks to his boots. “That one day I  _will_  win.”  
  
“It is highly unlikely. You have not won a match yet.”  
  
“Chalk it up to human stubbornness.” His eyes are lit up with a youthful mischief he has not possessed for many years.   
  
He shifts in his seat to move his knight across the board.  
  
“Check mate”  
  
“You did not follow the rules.”  
  
“But I didn’t have to sacrifice any of my men. None of my pieces died for my victory.”  
  
“I do not accept this outcome.”  
  
“And you never will, will you?” He sighs, rubs his palm over his tired face. “Tell me Cameron, will you always play by the rules?”  
  
“I operate as I’ve been programmed to.”  
  
He stares at her and there is the slightest quirk of a smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”  
  
“I have a new mission for you.” 

  
The chess kit is packed away now, the air is stale from living underground and John needs a drink of water after talking for so long.  
  
“Now, it might seem like a bad idea, you may even think that human attachment is a waste of time, but you have to let him know that you understand. Even if you don’t, you’ll have to pretend to.”  
  
She has been quiet since he told her that he’d be sending her away.  
  
“It’s very important Cameron. Can you do that?”  
  
“What am I to understand?” She looks up at him, her eyes are unreadable.  
  
“That being John Connor can be lonely.”  
  
“This is a bad thing?”  
  
“You’ll have to convince me it’s not.”  
  
  


  
**3\. Riley**  
  
They are both staring at the blue sky that they both know will one day turn to ash and trying to block that image out. It was her idea to come to this park today, to hear rusty metal groan as children swing back and forth. There is a hot dog vendor across the park, trying to get the few people that have assembled a pick up baseball game to buy his wares. The trees sway overhead, giving them shade and privacy from the families biking along the path.  
  
“You’re so lucky that you don’t have to shave every day.” Riley chirrups, out of the blue, her eyes following John’s jaw line.  
  
“What?” He looks across to where she’s laying down on the blanket with him, her hair tousled from when he ran his fingers through her curls and kissed below her ear.  
  
“Well, say you forget. No big deal, you just look rugged and sexy.” She leans over to touch his face, giggling at the scratchy feeling of his stubble against her palm.  
  
“You think I look sexy?” He can’t help the smile that spreads.  
  
Not one to be deterred from her original point, she continues, un-fazed by his boyish charm. “See, if I forget to shave my legs, even for just one day; suddenly I’m Big Foot.”  
  
He wants to tackle her and crow about catching the infamous Sasquatch but she’s shifted into a more serious mood and he knows that she wouldn’t take kindly to having his weight on top of her; Riley’s moods are more mercurial than the weather. He can’t predict the shifts and counts himself lucky that he’s a good enough observer of humans just to notice them.  
  
“Well, this is California, what do you expect?” He says to play into her point.  
  
“I just miss certain things, that’s all. Things I never thought I’d miss.” She retreats into herself with the statement, her eyes looking farther than John can see.  
  
He hates when she does this, even though he finally gets a sense of how frustrating it must be for other people when he has to be cryptic by necessity. He nudges her shoulder with his, hoping she’ll continue.  
  
“Okay, well at one of my old foster homes. My uh, foster mom was this old hippie, didn’t like us buying into the patriarchal idea of beauty.”  
  
“Must have gotten hot.” He tries to joke.  
  
“No. It was always cold.” She says as if still in the memory of that time, probably not even aware that her fingers are idly fiddling with the laces of her shoes.  
  
“Riley?” He wants his girlfriend back from wherever she’s gone.  
  
Suddenly her face splits into a bright smile that’s a little too cheery. Almost as if to make up for what’s just happened. “Let’s go get some frozen yogurt. I can never get enough of that.” She jumps up quickly, already giggling over something he hopes she’ll tell him.  
  
“You’re foster mom ban frozen foods from the house now?”  
  
“Something like that.” She says with a knowing smirk, taking his hand as she leads him toward the cart.  
  
  


  
**4\. Kate**  
  
It was their second month at this base camp and they had gone to their room to get some extra rest before leaving early the next morning for the next rendezvous. Cameron had been right; the machines did have trouble crossing the Rockies, but in the winter months, all the underground pipes froze and even the toughest soldier could be heard muttering about the conditions. John was on a tour to inspire the Resistance not to lose hope, even as his breath frosted during his speeches.  
  
He doesn’t want special treatment, but they rustle up a mattress for him anyway. He doesn’t want to appear ungracious so he accepts their offering and closes the door with a smile. He invites Kate to join him, glad that they have a bunk for her sake – she’d been favouring her left side lately as if she had back pain – he enjoys watching the way she takes off her shoes. She is always so methodical with the tiny details and he likes how she tucks her laces into the tongue.  
  
She understands his need to sleep fully clothed, but sharing a bed with his muddy boots is not what she signed up for when she argued her way onto this trip with him. So he slips off his boots before she pulls the worn blankets over his shoulders and twists to place a kiss on his cheek.  
  
He can hear her breathing slow and settle long before his own does.  
  
His own breathing is sharp and erratic when he wakes, his eyes blinking in the darkness as his arms flail out for purchase.   
  
“John, it’s me. You’re safe.”  
  
She quickly replaces the blankets he’s kicked off in his sleep, knowing that body heat must be conserved at all costs in this camp.  
  
“You had a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep.” He hates looking weak in front of her, has hated vulnerability ever since his mother ingrained it into him that it could get him and his loved ones killed. He rolls over, angry at himself.  
  
“Tell me about your childhood again.” She urges, snuggling closer for warmth.  
  
It’s easier to talk of things in the past, even though he can’t think of them as solid and unchanging. It’s still easier than talking of what haunts him when he sleeps.  
  
“It was so different when I was a kid. We moved around a lot, that’s the same,” he adjusts his bulk to face her, finally ready to show his face now that he’s composed himself again, “but it was so hot.”  
  
“And some nights you slept naked.” She fills in; she’s heard his stories enough times to parrot her favourite parts.  
  
“Yeah, it was stifling, even by the rivers, so the only relief was monsoon season.”  
  
He thinks back on his dream and searches for her hand under the blankets. “There was this old legend that my Mom used to tell me when we were living in South America. It says that witnessing death marks the soul."  
  
“She said that it was important to remember that the original Portuguese version before the translation used the word ‘mark’ and not ‘taint’.  
  
“She said it was because death can be a celebration of life or a release of suffering. I saw it from the point of view of a fatherless child, glad that I could carry  _something_  of my father with me. But now I think she was trying to prepare me for the death I’d see – and eventually cause.”  
  
“She never blamed you, John.”   
  
“No, I don’t think it was about blame. The moral was that being present when death visits will always leave an imprint on the souls of those left behind. She said that it was so that souls who had lost someone could find one another, like two halves becoming a whole.”  
  
“Is that how we found each other? You saw the mark on my soul and knew it matched yours?”  
  
He ignores her question to continue his story.  
  
“In the original version, it allows a wandering tribesman to find his village when he was lost.  
  
“But I could never get past the image of a black stain growing and spreading over my body. I had already seen so much death and I was so small, I was anxious to grow bigger, hoping to lose the stain, but instead of escaping the markings, they threatened to engulf me. Death followed me wherever I went.”  
  
“Death has followed us all, John. There is not a single person here who hasn’t lost a loved one.”  
  
“It’s different; I think I invite Death in. I’m the trigger. And I can’t even remember every face or name of every death I’ve brought about! There are so many that I fear I will never be clean – that my soul is no longer my own and I will drown in a pool of black.”  
  
“You won’t drown. I’ve got you.”  
  
“You’ve got me.” He repeats, reassuring himself with the mantra. “We’ve got each other.”  
  
“Besides, it’s so cold up here that any liquid would automatically freeze and you could just skate away.” She laughs and he delights in how it echoes across the cold concrete walls back to him, filling him with warmth.   
  


  
  
**5\. Savannah**  
  
He doesn’t have his mother’s knack for dealing with children that comes from having raised one. He’s always been isolated but this girl has seen things that only a handful of people know about and that makes them isolated together.  
  
“Hey, you remember me, right? ‘Squirrel runs around the tree...’”  
  
"Dives in the whole, scurries out the other side!" She repeats his old instructions, a smile forming from the memory.  
  
“That's right.”  
  
“You taught me how to tie my shoe.”  
  
“I did. At Dr. Sherman’s”  
  
“He died.”  
  
She has a blunt way of speaking and it reminds him of Cameron in its practicality. There are no double-meanings with this child, just facts and emotions without filter. He wonders what happened in her life to rob her of the protective fantasy of childhood and if it’s why she was at Dr. Sherman’s in the first place.  
  
She’s taken this whole experience very calmly.  
  
It unsettles him.  
  
She talks of death like an inevitable acquaintance and another piece of her history falls into place; she’s lost someone. He sits next to her, but a part of him still wants to keep his distance - she is here when Derek is not.  
  
“It’s all my fault.” She says with a tremor.  
  
“That is  _not_  true.” He knows all too well the power guilt can have and hopes to spare her its weight.  
  
“The teacher told me. Mommy told me too. Not to talk to John Henry. That if I did, bad people would come to our house and hurt us.”  
  
“Who’s John Henry?”  
  
“He’s my friend. At my Mommy’s work.”  
  
“What does he do there?”  
  
“He lives in the basement.”  
  
“He lives there?”  
  
John feels a sinking feeling in his gut, a trigger warning of what’s about to happen. His instincts tell him to get his mother. He fights them.  
  
“He can’t leave. There’s a cord in the back of his head.”  
  
“A cord?”  
  
“In the back of his head.”  
  
“Do other people talk to John Henry?”  
  
“Mr. Ellison.”  
  
“Mr. Ellison?”  
  
“He works for my mommy. He teaches John Henry stuff.”  
  
“What kind of stuff?”  
  
“Boring stuff. Mostly history. Mr. Ellison makes me leave sometimes.”  
  
“We have to find John Henry. Talk to him for a bit.”  
  
“Are you going to take him away?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“But John Henry is my friend. He sings with me.”  
  
“He sings?”  
  
“I taught him the song my Dad used to sing to me before he died.”  
  
“Did he ever hurt you?”  
  
“No. He played with me and my ducklings.”  
  
It sounds so innocent and he doesn’t want to pop that bubble for her. He thinks of how he grew up, always wary. He doesn’t want that life for this soft-spoken little girl. She looks like an angel. He thinks she must sound like one when she sings.  
  
He doesn’t know what he would do yet to save her life, to save a world of children like her. The time is coming soon when he will have to decide and he lingers here on the couch with her, the metal cooling his skin as he debates telling the others this new information. It would condemn Savannah to a life like his.  
  
He takes a deep breath, looks her in the eyes. This next bit is important.  
  
“Savannah, it’s essential that you tell me what he looks like.”  
  
“He’s my friend.”  
  
“I know that Savannah.”  
  
“Mommy is afraid people will hurt him. Is that what you’re going to do?”  
  
“No, Savannah, not if you tell me what he looks like.” John lies.  
  
“I need him.” She says, simple as that.  
  
He remembers saying the same thing about one of  _them_  beside a wrecked car, Cameron’s chip in his hand and his family staring at him with anger. He needed her, so he took the risk.  
  
He looks down at Savannah, half hoping....  
  
But she’s not family and family is all that you can trust; Sarah has drilled that into his brain since he was younger than she is now. He gets up to grab a missing person’s flyer.  
  
“Does he look like this?” He asks, knowing he can’t go back now.


End file.
